The Forgotten Gifts of Hermes: The Latin Reception of Proclus’ Commentary on Euclid’s Elements

The present work offers an account of the Latin reception of Proclus’ Commentary in the first book of Euclid’s Elements (In Euclidem). The overall goal of this paper is to offer a unified historical and philological map as a ground-tool for understanding the Latin reception of In Euclidem from the early 16th century to the 17th century, which includes manuscript sources hitherto overlooked. I will deal with the three known complete translations produced by Bartolomeo Zamberti (1473–1543), Giovanni Battista Gabia (c.1500–1590), and Francesco Barozzi (1537–1604), as well as with five fragmentary translations embedded in the works of Giorgio Valla (1447–1500), Jerónimo Muñoz (1520–1591), Conrad Dasypodius (1532–1600), Federico Borromeo (1564–1631), and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630). Each of these translations and the intentions of their authors are discussed in chronological order. Five of them (following the fragment chosen by Kepler) are partially edited in the Appendix.